


A Promise to the Dark

by ItsaVikingThing



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Halloween, Not a cute one, Spooky, There is a monster under the bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 10:49:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21252167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ItsaVikingThing/pseuds/ItsaVikingThing
Summary: Max is eleven when she meets the monster that lives under Chloe's bed.





	A Promise to the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Hellaween!

When Max is a little girl, she believes in monsters. She believes in monsters that hide in the shadows, that rush to fill the darkness left when the lights go out, that hide under the bed and wait for their chance to get unwary little girls and boys. It's a belief that endures for years, through all of her parents' exasperated assurances, a belief that dies only when Max makes a friend, her best and only real friend: Chloe Price.

Where Max is small and shy and afraid of almost everything, Chloe is tall and clever and braver than anyone probably should be. Life is often frightening, and always seems to move too fast for Max to be able keep up with it, but when she's with Chloe, it almost feels as if they share a little world of their own. It is a world that moves, like Chloe, at a sometimes dizzying pace, but Chloe is always there, pulling Max with her, helping her keep up. It's a world Max understands, a world where she can keep up.

And in the real world, Chloe is there whenever someone tries to pick on Max. Chloe is there to tease her and goad her into trying things she might otherwise never have done. Chloe is there, and she makes Max less afraid of all the terrors her imagination have provided her with over the years. Because even if Chloe laughs until she almost throws up when Max is nine and she admits that she's still frightened of monsters under the bed, Chloe also promises Max that she'll protect her. She promises Max that she'll feed any monster that tries to eat her a knuckle sandwich before it can get its teeth into Max. That makes Max laugh, and it makes her fears seem so silly and small in the light of Chloe's courage that Max is able to begin letting them go.

It's nice, having a friend like Chloe. And, for whatever reason, Chloe seems to think it's nice to have a friend like Max, too. It works well for them both, until Max is eleven. Then Chloe inherits a bed, a bigger bed, from a friend of her parents', and invites Max for a sleepover to break it in.

That's the night that Max finds out that monsters are real.

* * *

The monster slithers out of the darkness under Chloe's bed, after Chloe starts snoring but before Max has been able to figure out how to sleep on the new mattress. New things have always been more challenging for Max than for Chloe.

The monster isn't new, Max can tell. It smells like the parlour in Max's grandma's house: musty and thick with all the time that has passed through it. The creature doesn't have a particular shape or a particular colour. It has claws and fangs and a gaping, terrible mouth, but it doesn't keep its fangs in its mouth or its claws on its fingers. It doesn't have fingers, or anything like hands, but it does have long, long arms. Its skin--if it can be called skin--seems to change colour in acdordance with the light that falls on it. It ranges from charcoal to midnight blue depending on whether the light of the moon or the night light Max made Chloe leave on for them touches it. If anything, the shifting colours make it harder to see in the darkness of Chloe's room, not easier

It's eyes, though, are pinpricks of darkness deeper than any Max has ever seen, a blackness so deep that Max thinks if she looks too long into them, she'll fall into those eyes and never be seen in this world again.

"You should not be awake," the monster says. Its voice sounds like hairy spiders crawling into Max's ears. "You should go to sleep."

Max knows that Chloe would say something clever or brave, but she's neither so she says nothing.

"You should sleep, child. In the morning, I will be a forgotten nightmare."

Max shakes her head, certain that her eyes are bugging out. It surprises both of them, when Max speaks. "You'll get me if I fall asleep."

"I will not. I did not come for you. I came for her."

It points at Chloe with a claw longer than Max's forearm. Max doesn't want to look at the monster anymore, and she's desperate to look at Chloe, to shake Chloe awake, to have Chloe there to protect her. But Max thinks that if she looks away, the monster will get her somehow, and Max is a coward who doesn't want to be got, so she doesn't look away.

"Did you come with the bed...?" Max whispers. She can hear Joyce and William downstairs, laughing at something on the TV. That tells Max that this is real. Her dreams don't make TV noises. "Why do you want Chloe?"

"I am hungry." It makes a sound like bats keening in agony. That's what its laughter sounds like, Max realises. "I eat seeds."

"She's not a seed, she's a girl," Max points out, speaking as clearly as she can, hoping that it's all just some misunderstanding they can sort out. "You can't eat her." Max bites her lip, thinking hard. "You could get sick, if you eat a girl instead of a seed. You should probably just go and...and find a farm. Or a flower shop. They'll have lots of seeds."

"I do not eat the kinds of seeds that are planted in the earth." The monster laughs again. "Is she a clever girl, your...friend?"

"...yes."

"How clever?"

Homework is often a struggle for Max, but even though Chloe is a year older than her and her homework is that much harder, Chloe always finishes hers first and never seems to struggle at all. 

"Lots," Max admits.

"Is she curious? Does she ask a great many questions?"

"Yes." Chloe asks questions about everything imaginable, and her imagination is richer than any bank, according to her dad, William.

"Is she brave?"

"The bravest," Max says, without hesitation. Maybe it's wrong to answer a monster's questions, but it would feel more wrong to deny how special Chloe is. "She wouldn't be afraid of you!"

"Not like you," the monster says, and now it sounds like spiders that have been dipped in honey are crawling into Max's head. "You are afraid of me."

Max knows better than to admit that, even if she thinks it must be obvious to the monster how terrified she is. It can probably hear how fast her heart is beating and smell the sweat on her skin.

"You aren't clever or brave or curious. Not like her. Are you?"

The monster is right, of course, but Max clamps her mouth shut before she can confess that truth. She wipes her tears from her cheeks and stares at the place the monster's legs would be, if it had person legs.

"The clever, the curious, the brave..." The monster shuffles closer. "They carry potential within them, potential like seeds that will sprout in the future. That is what I eat. She has so much potential, and I will only take some of it. Go to sleep, and neither of you will ever know that anything was taken at all."

Max shakes her head. "Nuh-uh."

The monster considers Max. "You have no such seeds. You are ordinary. You will be forgotten before you are even dead."

Max shakes her head again, but she believes it. She believes every word.

"She is special. She will grow more and more special." The monster pauses. It moves a little closer, drips more honey on the spiders of its voice. "She will forget you. She will grow up, and she won't need you. No one will need you."

Max believes that, too.

"But if I take a little of what makes her special," the monster continues slowly, sounding as if it's just thought of something. "Yes, if I take away some of her potential for greatness...there will be less distance between you as you grow. She will still be your friend. She will still need you. Doesn't that sound...nice?"

It does. At least, the part where Chloe will always be Max's friend sounds like everything Max could want out of life.

"Go to sleep," the monster hisses, moving right up to Max's side of the bed. "Everything will be better in the morning."

Max wants to close her eyes. She wants this to all be a dream, to become a dream. She dreads few things more than responsibility, than having to make a choice that will affect other people. She secretly hates when Chloe's mom asks her what she wants for dinner, because whatever Max picks, Chloe will get too. There's so much pressure to get it right, when someone asks her anything like that. 

Chloe's good at making those kinds of choices, of course. And she's good at arguing with her mom that she should get to pick what's for dinner when Max freezes up entirely. She always picks something that Max loves, too, and that's one of many things that Max loves about Chloe, one of the many ways that Chloe makes life less overwhelming for Max.

But then, if there's something she dreads more than responsibility, it's monsters being real. All Max needs to do is close her eyes, and she won't have to worry anymore. Would Chloe even know anything had changed in the morning?

The monster moves closer. "Yes, child. Cloooose your eyessss..."

"Did you..." Max's voice cracks, and she isn't even sure what she's saying, but she licks her lips, and forces herself to keep her eyes open and her words flowing. "Did you know Chloe got suspended for fighting one time?"

Max is careful not to look at the monster's eyes, but she can feel the weight of them on her as the monster halts.

"Yeah, she...she beat up a boy who was bullying me," Max says, swallowing. "Sh-she did it on a day when I was sick. She got a cut lip and a suspension, but the boy had two black eyes and he didn't bother me ever again. She did it when I wasn't there because...because Chloe didn't want me to know she did it. She wanted me to come back and for things to be okay for me and for it to just be...just be not a big deal."

"Yes, she is very brave," the monster growls. "Now hush!"

"No! I mean, yeah, she is! But, see, she's kind. To me. She takes care of me."

"When she forgets you, you will have no one to take care of you."

"Th-that's o-okay," Max whispers, swiping more tears from her eyes. "At least I'll be able to feel like I did something good for her for once. So, uh, I think I won't. Close my eyes. Sorry."

"You will sleep! You will look away! You are a coward, you are too weak to defy me!"

And Max is a coward. Everyone knows it. Even Chloe calls her chicken all the time. But...Chloe always takes Max's hand afterwards, and she always finds a way to make Max feel brave. And just for once, just for Chloe, Max wants to be brave. But all Max knows how to be is scared. Normally, that's the sort of thought that crushes her, but this time...this time Max thinks that maybe she can be what Chloe needs just by being herself.

"Chloe would be brave, but I'm afraid," Max says softly. She reaches back, finding Chloe's hand and clutching it in her own. Then she sucks in a breath and says, "You're right. I'm a coward. I'm a coward, and I'm so afraid, I know I won't sleep at all tonight. I'm so scared, I won't be able to take my eyes off of you. Not even for a second. Not for one single second! Do you hear me?"

The monster flinches, and seems to shrink. "I will devour you both!"

"Okay," Max snaps, drawing strength from the feel of Chloe's hand in hers. "Do that then!"

The monster hisses, scratching at the air with its claws but not, Max notices, the air directly over the bed.

"You can't get either of us, not while I'm watching! Not while we're in the bed! Can you?"

"There...there will be other nights, child! You won't be here every night. I will--"

"I am way too scared to ever sleep alone again," Max says triumphantly. "There's no way I'll ever sleep anywhere else than beside Chloe!" Max raises her head, and she can see the night light shining through the monster's body. She raises her head and locks eyes with the monster. "You can wait as long as you want, but I'll be this big a coward my whole life. You'll starve before I let you near her!"

The black pits of its eyes drag at her, but Max is holding Chloe's hand. Max knows that Chloe is stronger than any monster, so she clings onto Chloe's hand and she believes that Chloe's weight will keep Max locked in place. And in the end, Max doesn't get dragged into those terrible eyes. Instead, those eyes become transparent, the whole monster becomes less solid, and it shrinks away from Max, and it slinks down to the floor. 

It has to be Max's imagination, of course, but in the instant before the monster--now a shadow as substantial as a whisper in a library--slips back under the bed, it looks like the monster is the one scared of _her_.

Max stays awake until sunlight begins to filter through Chloe's bedroom windows. She doesn't let go of Chloe's hand, even when she finally falls asleep.

* * *

When Max wakes up late the next morning, she agrees with Chloe that the new bed is terrible: it smells weird, and it isn't comfortable at all. Chloe's old bed is still in the garage, awaiting a trip to the junkyard. After a brief debate, which Max yawns through, it's decided that Chloe will argue for the beds to be swapped around again and the newer bed to be dumped.

Chloe goes to tell her parents. Max lies on the floor, staring into the shadows under the bed until William, Joyce and Chloe come to take it away. When she tells them that she's making sure that the monster under the bed doesn't get into Chloe's old one, they just laugh.

"You're such a little weirdo sometimes," Chloe says, throwing herself down next to Max and slinging an arm over her shoulders.

"I guess," Max says softly, leaning into Chloe's side. She puts her arm around Chloe's waist.

Chloe laughs and ruffles her hair. "Well, you're my weirdo. Never change, Max!"

"I won't," Max promises the darkness under Chloe's bed.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Please rate this story's spookiness in the comments section. I'm trying to get a good spooky rating this year.


End file.
